Experts can discuss Obama’s State of the Union proposals

BUFFALO, N.Y. — University at Buffalo experts are
available to speak to the media about ideas and proposals that
President Barack Obama shared in his State of the Union address,
from energy policies to the need to better prepare American
students for high-tech careers and increasing the minimum
wage.

Gardella can discuss the president’s message regarding
the need to equip American students with skills in science,
technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) to meet the demands
of a high-tech economy.

He is director of the Interdisciplinary Science and Engineering
Partnership (ISEP), an initiative to improve science education at
12 Buffalo Public Schools by increasing interdisciplinary, hands-on
learning. The program engages about 60 middle and high school
teachers each year in research-based professional development that
encourages them to enliven classrooms with experiments and other
hands-on activities.

“ISEP is an example of a STEM program that is leveraging
university and community resources to provide young people with the
knowledge and skills they need to be successful in modern,
high-tech careers,” Gardella says. “We work with middle
and high schools to develop and implement STEM learning experiences
that meet the unique needs and interests of both students and
teachers.”

“ISEP is funded by the National Science Foundation, and is
an example of a federally-funded program that is bringing new,
needed opportunities to schoolchildren,” Gardella adds.
“Thanks to the leadership of the Obama administration, in
both the Department of Education and the National Science
Foundation, there is a tight focus on aligning STEM work in higher
education to supporting teacher professional development and school
based innovation to bring STEM related classroom content and
curricula to all students.”

Hatton focuses on work and those making – or struggling to
make – a living from it. Her first book, “The
Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar
America,” examines the temporary help industry and its
adverse effects on the economy and workers, and her research also
extends to the fields of gender, race, labor, political economy and
public policy.

“The proposed increase in the minimum wage is both
important and necessary. It will certainly not be enough to solve
all struggling families' problems, but when you're supporting a
family on the minimum wage, every little bit counts. In fact, such
an increase represents a 25 percent pay increase,” Hatton
says.

“Although an extra $70 a week might be meaningless to
those who earn over $100,000 a year, it is not meaningless to the
thousands of parents who feed their children and pay for medical
bills on a minimum wage job.”

Newman is co-author of Compensation, the leading book on that
topic for the past 25 years. He can also speak on the topic of
minimum wage from personal experience, having worked undercover at
seven fast-food restaurants while writing his book, My Secret Life
on the McJob: Lessons from Behind the Counter Guaranteed to
Supersize Any Management Style.

“Raising the minimum wage is a complicated issue,”
Newman says. “Retailers will tell you that it will be the end
of their businesses, but minimum wage workers will tell you that it
is the beginning of a life for them.”

Owley, an expert in environmental law and land conservation,
can speak on the president’s remarks on energy and climate
change.

“The President's energy policy gives environmentalists
both something to cheer about and something to worry about,”
Owley says. “It is encouraging that he is reinforcing his
support of renewable energies. His support of using public land as
places to locate renewable energy facilities (like wind and solar)
will help move the country forward. This must be done carefully,
however. The push to develop solar quickly has outpaced our studies
of the potential environmental impacts of those facilities. The
President is continuing to support his ‘all of the
above’ approach for energy, though, championing development
of domestic oil and gas. This strategy slows our need to reduce
fossil fuel use and increases environmental degradation in the
meaning time.”

“Without mentioning the term hyrdrofracking, the
President's speech implies that he supported increased use of this
technique. He talks about burning cleaner and speeding up permits
but does not talk about other environmental concerns. The
environmental implications of hydrofracking development remain
uncertain. Last year Obama pledged to require disclosure of the
chemicals. That has yet to occur. Furthermore, we need to go beyond
chemical disclosure and subject this industry to the Clean Water
Act and other environmental laws.”

Owley adds that the president’s suggestion to develop an
Energy Security Trust is “a good idea. “We need to be
reducing our energy use and increasing efficiency. This is an area
where American ingenuity has excelled, and we should draw on it
more.”

Owley teaches environmental law, property, land conservation and
Federal Indian Law. She received her PhD in environmental science,
policy and management from the University of California-Berkeley in
2005, shortly after completing her JD at Berkeley Law in 2004.
Though her general research is on land conservation and property
rights, her current scholarship focuses on using property tools for
conservation in the context of climate change.

Neel Rao’s research interests are in the areas of labor
economics, health economics and organizational economics. Recent
working papers include “Social Learning in the Labor Market:
An Analysis of Siblings,” and “The Impact of
Macroeconomic Conditions in Childhood on Adult Labor Market
Outcomes.”

“Although some claim that a rise in the federal minimum
wage will increase unemployment overall, it is not obvious that
this is always the case. Basic models of competitive labor markets
do predict some increase in unemployment from a higher minimum
wage, an effect that may be especially important for younger,
unskilled workers. However, not all empirical studies find evidence
of this phenomenon, and other more complex models do not make this
prediction,” Rao says.

“A higher federal minimum wage might benefit some workers
with low earnings. In real dollars, the federal minimum wage is
lower today than in the 1970s. Income inequality also appears to
have increased in the U.S. since then.”

Roy, an expert in early childhood education and pre-kindergarten
training, can speak on the president’s remarks on the need to
expand early education for 4- and 3-year-olds.

“Basically, the president is planning to increase funding
to support universal pre-K for children in low- to middle-income
families,” Roy says. “Currently the states bear the
vast majority of the responsibility for this. Mr. Obama is
interested in increasing the number of children and potentially
reducing the age of the children to 3 who receive this valued
service.”

“In 2011, the State of New York served about 45 percent of
the eligible 4-year-olds. This initiative is a result of the
decades of data supporting the long-term individual and societal
benefits of children attending preschool.”

"Numerous long-term studies, including the Perry Preschool,
which began in the early 60s, have found that individuals and
society benefit from children attending high-quality preschool as
early as possible. The long-term benefits include increased
educational success measured through increased achievement and
attainment; decreased special education and grade repetition;
decreased behavioral difficulties, depression, drug use, or
involvement in crime; increased earnings; and employment success.
These individual benefits result in savings to society in costs
associated with crime and punishment, health care costs and social
service costs associated with dependence on government support.

"Short-term benefits include increased cognitive skills —
kids are learning positive things and they enjoy it. Social and
emotional skills also develop well in a high-quality program.
Children learn how to regulate their own behavior to learn well in
a group. Elements of a high-quality program include teachers who
are well-educated and paid fairly. They plan well to meet the
children’s needs and then reflect on their work to
continuously improve the children’s learning. Class size and
ratio of teachers to children should be adequate to meet the needs
of the class and allow the teacher to do his or her job well. There
needs to be a policy foundation within which a preschool operates
that supports its success for it to be high quality."

Paul Zarembka
Professor, Department of Economics
University at Buffalo
716-645-8686zarembka@buffalo.edu

Paul Zarembka specializes in Marxist theory, U.S. labor history
and economic development. He is editor of the annual series
“Research in Political Economy” (Emerald Group) and the
author of “Essays in Modern Capital Theory.”

“A federal increase in the minimum wage is likely to have
a positive effect on U.S. employment figures because it will
increase the purchasing power of workers, which has a tendency to
increase sales and overall employment. Studies of state minimum
wage increases show the same result,” Zarembka says.

“Employees can readily understand this result.
Employers, however, are often short-sighted and think only of
its immediate effect on wage costs and are not conscious of the
greater total profits this may generate for their
businesses,” he adds.

“In general, an increase in the federal minimum wage may
somewhat increase incomes at the bottom end of the employment scale
– that is, the incomes of workers who make a more important
contribution to your life relative to their incomes than do
CEOs.”